Metaphors and Analogies from High Schoolers

Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays:

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated, because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35mph.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any Ph Cleanser.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Words

Words

It’s funny how those simple symbols

hold magic powers. How meaning is

made out of what we live, see, breathe,

and how for each person a single word can mean

something different.

Like the day I heard the word “drowned,”

And the day years ago when I heard the words “it’s a boy,”

the first dashing me to pieces,

the other lifting me to float on clouds.

And then there was the day I heard “cancer,”

and I think I crumbled at just those two

short syllables.

The power of words reminds me of the spider web

in the tale of Charlotte’s Web, when Wilbur the pig

hung on those words in the web as if his life depended on them.

And in a way they did.

For some the word “horse,” might conjur up visions

of fear, but for me

I see the downy day I fell in love,

remembering her white mane and tail and her soft

velvety muzzle in my palm.

And when I say to you, “the sky was red last night,”

You might see the sky over the ocean at sunset,

making you feel all warm and dewy and filled with longing,

But I always see the sun over Moscow Mountain

on a warm summer evening,

the sound of frogs in the background

and the warm breeze lifting my hair from my neck and face

making me feel like I can fly.

Cheryl Dudley

Writing Memoir

On paper, maybe I'll live it with a flair

and pink ink (imagine that!)

In fustian fashion, so to speak.

I’ll sit at my escritoire and re-script,

blank out the boring,

elaborate on the extra-ordinary

then white out the in-

comprehensible.

I’ll rip out those days of pseudo-psychology

spent reading definitions of dysfunctions,

fling away the dances with anger

and tango to some new tunes.

I’ll walk down that Road Less Traveled with

rubies on the soles of my shoes--

create one Grandiloquent Canon,

filled with purple patches and euphuisms.

This time the script will be a best seller

a Nobel Prize,

A second chance.

Cheryl Dudley

SillyPants

Child Development

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs

and sauntered off the beaches into forests

working up some irregular verbs for their first conversation,

so three-year-old children enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added to the repertoire.

You Dumb Goopyhead,

You Big Sewerface,

You Poop-on-the-Floor

(a kind of Navaho ring to that one) they yell from knee level, their little mugs flushed with challenge.

Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out in a pub,

but then the toddlers are not trying to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts

or going after the attention of the giants.

The mature save their hothead invective for things:

an errant hammer, tire chains, or receding trains missed by seconds,

though they know in their adult hearts,

even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed

for his appalling behavior,

that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,

their wives are Dopey Dopeheads

and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

Billy Collins

Alaska

This is one of my favorite scenery photos of my recent trip to Alaska. The glacier in the foreground is Margerie Glacier.

Our Old House

When I drive by I always think I see me

standing in the large picture window waving,

wishing I’d stop by and have a cup of Russian tea.

 

But it’s only a wish--

because I didn’t really want to leave,

and when I drive by, smell the row

of lilacs I planted along the road,

see the gray smoke curling from the chimney,

 

I want to pull in and stop,

pretend I never left, unload the groceries,

stoke the fire, straighten the photos on the wall

and wash the dishes that have stacked

by the sink for ten years.

 

You’d be there, too, in your blue pajamas

asking for a story. We’d climb the narrow

staircase to your room and turn on the lamp,

listening for a moment to the frogs outside,

that bellowed thousands strong.

 

I’d read your Sweet Pickles books

and sing that Bumble Bee song you loved.

Then we’d lie quietly and never grow old,

while time went on without us, down

the dusty country road, slipping over the horizon,

leaving a soft orange glow for us to read by.

 

You're all invited to my book signing at the Appaloosa Museum

October 3

10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.